Swiss train collision kills driver, injures 35

A head-on collision of two trains in western Switzerland late Monday left one of the trains' drivers dead, and injured at least 35 people, five of them seriously, according to reports from Swiss television.

The crash took place near the station of Granges-pres-Marnand shortly before 7 p.m. local time on a regional line about 30 miles southwest of Bern, the capital of Switzerland.

Police spokesman Jean-Christophe Sauterel told Reuters that it was too early to know what caused the crash and investigators were onsite trying to determine what happened.

The collision marks the second major train accident in Europe this month, with 79 people killed in a high-speed derailment in Spain last week, the country’s worst train disaster in decades.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Swiss state police spokesman Pierre-Olivier Gaudard told public TV station SRF that one person had yet to be recovered from the wreckage. On Monday evening, the BBC reported that a body had been recovered and was that of one of the drivers. An autopsy was ordered to formally establish his identity, a police statement said. 

Some of the injured passengers were treated by paramedics at the scene, while others were taken to the hospital in Lausanne. 

One of the trains was heading to Lausanne, and the other was going to Payerne. Photographs from the site showed the two regional trains locked together, partly lifted off the tracks by the force of the collision.

The Swiss train collision follows on the heels of two other major train disasters, one in Spain last week and another in Quebec earlier this month.

Despite the spate of incidents, train travel remains one of the safest modes of transport in the European Union, according to a 2013 report from the E.U.’s European Railway Agency.

The fatality risk is three times lower for train passengers than bus passengers, the report said, and while there are about 2,400 significant rail accidents each year in the E.U., the accident rate has fallen an average of 6 percent each year since 1990.

Last week, 79 people were killed in a high-speed derailment in Spain, the country’s worst train disaster in decades.

A Spanish judge charged the driver, Francisco Garzon, with reckless homicide on Sunday after he allegedly drove the train too fast through a tight curve on the outskirts of the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela.

The high-speed train slammed into a concrete wall and crumpled, and some of the cars caught fire. The impact was so strong that one of the train carriages was thrown several meters high over an embankment.

Seventy people remain hospitalized with injuries from the crash, 22 are in critical condition.

In a closed-door hearing, Garzon admitted taking the curve too fast, blaming it on a momentary lapse, according to media reports.

The judge released Garzon on the conditions that he checks in regularly with the court, surrenders his passport and does not operate any trains.

And in Quebec, an unattended train carrying crude oil came loose July 6 and hurtled down a 7-mile incline before derailing and igniting in Lac-Megantic, near the Maine border. The fiery explosion killed at least 47 people.

Seventy-two of the train's 73 cars were carrying crude oil, and at least five exploded, setting off massive explosions that devastated the small lakeside town of 6,000 people. 

Source: Al Jazeera and wire services